“The first step is to find out what you love – and don’t be practical about it. The second step is to start doing what you love immediately, in any small way possible.”

And our dreams are who we are.

We all need to learn a new language for love – a language that speaks not in socks, pancakes, and paychecks, but in shared fascination with physics or poetry, delight in each other’s uniqueness, and mutual practical and emotional support.

Whatever your dreams are, start taking them very, very seriously.

Down deep we really know our worth, but we don’t have easy access to that knowledge. We need to hear praise coming from outside ourselves or we won’t remember that we deserve it.

Real obstacles don’t take you in circles. They can be overcome. Invented ones are like a maze.

Action helps you think and raises your self-esteem. Good luck happens when you’re in action. Ask yourself, “Does this go toward or away from what I want?” There’s an animal in us, and it has great instincts. Scan for a desire and follow it. Set a goal, any goal, and start doing everything you can think of to achieve it.

You don’t have to get it right the first time.

When you start using senses you’ve neglected, your reward is to see the world with completely fresh eyes.

Originality is genius. If you respect and care for it, it will take you on the ride of your life.

What you want is what you need. Your dearest wish comes straight from your core, loaded with vital information about who you are and who you can become.

Thinking about swimming isn’t much like actually getting in the water. Actually getting in the water can take your breath away.

Isolation is the dream killer.

Each destination you reach only opens out into wider horizons, new and undiscovered countries for you to explore.

Irreverence is a declaration of independence.

It’s essential to distinguish between events that are really beyond your control and events you caused yourself.

Whenever you do what you really love, your heart lifts, your mind opens, and everything changes. You wake up. That’s what true adventure really is.

And to the extent that we do not violate any known laws of the universe, we can probably make it work the way that we want to.

There has to be a better way to meet those needs and demands than we are doing now.

I’m just a kid that defied the odds. I’m just a kid that ignored the doubt. I’m just a kid from a little place in Dublin, Ireland, that went all the way, and I’m going to continue to go all the way.

I don’t fight in chase of an individual. I hear this sometimes where fighters work their whole careers to reach a matchup with a certain individual. I do not think in that way.

The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.

Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience… from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

As long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way of knowing whether God exists or not.

I’m humbled and enormously grateful to be connected to [Franz] Kafka in a any way. He is one of the writers I admire. I think he has been a big influence on me.